Unwind
by Assimbya
Summary: A retelling of the novel as a myth or fairy tale.


There was once a young man, who journeyed far from his home, for he was a man of honor, and of duty and he, like many young men, had never before left the country where he had grown up. He had a young woman whom he loved, and he had already taken on the responsibilities of adulthood, but still he had never left his home, and innocence was fresh upon his face. He knew of light and sky and smiles, of flowers pressed in books and silver rings fitted upon women's hands, but he did not know of the dark things, the things that lie beneath the earth, things that have decayed and rotted and corrupted and fermented beyond the reach of nature.

He traveled far and he traveled long, into places where the people spoke in words unfamiliar to him, and hung his neck heavy with gold charms to ward off evil, weighed down his pockets with amulets and herbs. The people, hands calloused from working in the earth, could see his innocence, and tried to warn him that it would be spoilt by the place to which he was going, but he wrote letters home to his beloved and did not listen.

("I shall go out to seek my fortune," say the young heroes to their families. And although their mothers cry, although their fathers berate, although their brothers scoff, they take their journeys with light feet and light hearts. The goddesses smile upon them, they give them magic things to ease their battles, but they know that, when the heroes hands are stained with blood, they will always change, despite the magic sandals, despite the helmets conferring invisibility.)

He reached the castle that he sought, dark against the sky, and he felt the cold of the Underworld grip his heart and he was afraid. But he stepped through the door, crossed the threshold, armed not with swords but with legal documents. And the man inside, the monster inside, the prince inside, the god-demon-angel-tyrant inside welcomed him, his hands with their long nails held open in generosity. And the young man took the hands in his own and let the door close behind him.

It was luxury inside, ancient luxury, ancient pleasures, and the young man was fascinated. He listened to the man-monster speak of long gone battles and wished for things beyond his legal documents. He forgot his quest, forgot why he was there, though he wrote letters still to his beloved.

The man-monster came to him at night, came with long nails and long teeth, came, incubus, to force the young man to lose himself and his ideals in dreamlike pleasure and pain. But there were conditions, there were doors he was forbidden to open, and he was never to see the truth beyond the mist. The devil takes other forms, and the victims never notice the horned feet until it is too late.

(The demon lover gives his beloved a ring of keys, and tells her that she may open all the doors but one. The other doors are full of treasures gleaming bright, things that the beloved should be contented with all the span of their life, but the other door calls, it beckons, for the beloved can smell the blood coming from underneath it, and cannot pretend that the world is complete with only brightness. And so the beloved opens the door, and there are the wives –)

There were the wives, and they were dead, too young to hide their demonic nature as the man-monster had. Their skin was cold, their gowns were tatters, and they did not engulf the young man in amnesiac mist before they pressed their fangs against his neck. They drank deep of his innocence, and he wept for his beloved at home, for waistcoats and corsets and the safety that has, all his life, allowed him to forget the overwhelming realities of human flesh, of the blood and muscles and bones beneath it.

The man-monster was angry, and locked the young man's door, though the young man did scream for freedom. His letters to his beloved grew ever more convoluted but, with the man-monster's mist gone from his mind, his resolve was strong, and his quest returned to him. He would strike the monster in its lair; he would find the truth which had been hidden from him by old tapestries and poetic words.

He escaped from his room and he went to look upon the daytime truth of the man-monster's nighttime visits. He descended into the labyrinth, leaving his cord of twine behind him. He went to look upon the Gorgon's fearful face.

(The maiden's safety is guaranteed upon one condition – that she never seek to look upon her lover's face in the light of day. But she cannot live in ignorance, cannot live not knowing whether she loves a god or a demon. And so she goes with her oil lamp, into the place where he sleeps in the day.)

He looked upon the face of Death itself in his coffin, saw the blood upon his lips, the maggots in his clothes, the skeletal outlines of his aquiline features. And he fled the land of nightmares, catching up his amulets and herbs, though, when he attempted to pick upon his innocence and take it with him, it slipped from his fingers.

-

There were once two young women who loved one another as sisters only more truly, as lovers only more purely. There were as different as the twilight is from the midnight – one fair and the other dark, one fanciful and the other practical, one fragile and the other brittle. They stayed together in a house by the wide sea, and spoke together of their beloveds. The beloved of the dark one had traveled to a distant and dangerous land, and she did fear for him, but the fair one gave her reassurance, and in her tenderness the dark one was comforted.

The fair one loved to make gifts for those dear to her, and she made many such for the dark one, careful things and flowers and twine and poems written in her pretty script. The dark one pressed the things to her heart and swore to the fair one that she would ever keep her safe. Neither of them had parents fit for caring for them. They were happy and content in their gentle worlds, in the gardens that they planted together.

But, one day, the sea brought a creature to their shores, and dangerous being, one that, with a single hand, could kill them both.

(The two girls live alone in a cottage in the woods, and they are contented until the day that a bear stumbles to their idyll, weakened but still dangerous, and they are kind to him, they leave the door open for him in the cold of winter, but there is one of them who likes him more, is fascinated by how dark and dangerous he is, and though the other girl is wise and clever, she cannot see what will happen.)

And the fair girl saw him and was changed, began to look upon the world as she had not before. Her skin grew colder, and though the dark girl held her close and locked her windows shut, the ice which the sea-borne creature had placed upon her separated the two of them such that the dark girl could not manage to truly touch the fair one.

(The boy and girl live beside one another for all the years of their lives, and do love one another greatly, until a shard of ice is lodged in the boy's eye, and he cannot see ordinary things as he used to, the only thing that he can see clearly is the Queen who sent the shard into his eye, the cold Queen, the tyrant, who must possess all that she desires until it grows as cold as she is. And the girl must journey to free the boy, through snow and suffering, but that she is willing to endure for the sake of her friend of all her life.)

The fair girl began to wander out into the cold grass during the dusk, her eyes closed, guided by the power of creature who had wrapped her mind and will in his spells. The dark girl went to fetch her each night, but the next night the fair girl was there again.

And each morning the fair girl was tired from dancing with the fairies, each day her shoes were worn through and her feet bloodied, but she could say not where she had been, for when she tried to think about it, her mind filled up with mist and the sounds of an unearthly flute.

She grew sick from the exertions of her nights, and doctors were called in to help her, but they were fools who knew not how addictive the fairy dances were. They did not know enough to realize that she would unlock the windows herself, that she would put aside the charms to ward away the demons, and she would go the dances with her new pairs of shoes, rational thought no longer a possibility.

But the creature who had enchanted her, though he loved her, was merciless, and knew not how to love except by taking all of his beloved, by drawing her into his world of shadows and leaving a demon-figment in her place, to speak with her voice and to smile with her teeth. And sometimes the fair girl grew tired of the dances, particularly when she saw the mortals there who were crushed under the feet of the heedless, dancing fairies, and she wept to the creature, she told him that she wished to go home to her beloved and her friend, the dark girl, and the others who cared for her without hurting her, but then the creature would whirl her again until she was dizzy and the words were stolen from her.

Until, one day, the doctors and the friends saw that the key-cold figure they had placed into the earth was a false image, a figment, and they came looking for her, to steal her out of the shadow world though they knew that, as she was, the undiluted sunlight would melt her to nonexistence.

-

There once was a young woman who was in grave danger. She was hunted, by an enemy, a King, more terrible than the natural earth could have created, and the things that he would do to her if she were caught were too terrible for those who loved her to contemplate. She was protected by a band of men who cared for her, but in the day they left to fight her enemy, and they would not let her come with them, but kept her at home, where they thought her to be safe. They told her not to open the door, to invite no one in, but they told her not enough that she knew why.

But she had a kind heart and so she opened the door, only once, but once was enough. The King came, in his regal majesty, and he was strong and he was terrible. And he threatened her and those she loved, and caught her thin wrists in his cold hands, and she was afraid and he smiled.

(The King of the Underworld steals from the earth one of its daughters, brings her down with him into the darkness, down where there is sometimes silence so complete that her human heartbeat echoes through the caverns, and there, in that world of grief and cold beauty, he binds her to him. He forces her teeth apart, her mouth open, and with his other hand he rips open the flesh of a pomegranate, exposes its red gleaming seeds, and into her open mouth he places –)

And she did not scream for fear of his threats, and he, pelican-like, opened his chest for her, let flow the cursed blood which lay stagnant in his veins, his power and his torment. The King pushed the young woman's head to his chest, till her mouth opened with human need to breathe and he had her, had –

(six seeds. And they are sweet upon her tongue, and she swallows them.)

But the job was only half done, for the door was forced open then, her friends returned to her side, to drag her back to light and safety. He left, and the job was only halfway done, for she had swallowed his blood but he had not drained hers completely enough, and she was left cursed, tainted, demon blood and human heart. She wept in sunlight but could not feel safe in night. And upon her heavy burdens were lain, protective amulets that hung about her head like lead weights, burn marks on her skin to her seeming like marks of penance, for she thought it to be her fault in some respect, however little there had been for her to do.

(But the job is only halfway done, six seeds, not twelve, six months, not twelve, only half the year. And she must needs go up and down the stairs to hell, a wraith of herself in each world, missing him with the violent pain of a wound in her heart when she is gone from him, and cringing from his touch in undeniable fear when she is with him. And thus she spends eternity.)

And they journeyed far, her protectors, to destroy the King and free her from his curse, but she knew, with the certainty of her breath and heartbeat, that his call to her would be as iron around her wrists, and she would go and be made his Queen-consort, steal from her bed in the dim twilight, and burn in hatred and desire, love and fear.

-

There was once a young man who journeyed far from home to find out what fear was, and he found it at home, when his beloved was threatened by death.

There was once a young woman who danced with the fairies, and she danced so long that she died from exhaustion.

There was once a woman who was dragged into the Underworld, and when she was brought back out again, she was never the same.

There was once a castle in the mountains in a land beyond a forest, and from its windows and its doors blew a wind that twisted ordinary lives into stories, and in their confines men and women circled endlessly, from beginnings to endings and beginnings again, and in that castle lived a man who was prince and dragon, sorcerer and conjured demon, king and outcast, lover and enemy. And when he died, he turned to dust, like the crumbling pages of an ancient book.


End file.
